


Sad in His Presence

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Christian Bible (Old Testament), תנ"ך | Tanakh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was served him, I carried the wine and gave it to the king. Now, I had never been sad in his presence before.<br/>Nehemiah 2:1</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sad in His Presence

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Talullah

 

 

The city shimmers, layers of stone buildings gleaming in the harsh desert light, everything golden and viscerally real, almost alive, as if the whole edifice had simply risen up out of the surrounding sands. It seemed at once myriad and singular, like a multifaceted bauble dangling before my eyes, as bright and alluring as the shine of a polished coin.

*

The back of my head hit the ground and I winced, trying and failing to dislodge the bemused prince crouching on top me. He tugged my hair in irritation.

"Nem, even when I know you let me win, it's not this easy. Where's your head?"

I blushed.

"I was just - my mother was telling me stories."

"About the city again?" Xerxes asked, flopping over to sprawl beside me.

I nodded.

"Nem, she's never even been to that stupid city. Your whole family's lived in Susa for - for - ages and ages!"

I sighed. 

"I know. But sometimes she talks about everybody that went back when King Cyrus let `em, like she really wishes our family had too. It just sounds so - aw, I dunno."

Xerxes scowled. 

"Well, it's a good thing they didn't, or else we wouldn't have best friends." 

He declared this with all the confident authority of a royal child, aware that he is born to power but still ignorant of the limitations of the world. Raising the objection that we might have somehow had best friends other than each other simply never occurred to me.

*

Far too soon, my swaggering, self-assured Xerxes became King Artaxerxes, bowed by the weight of robes and gems and armies. When my mother and brothers departed a few years later for Jerusalem, I stayed with him, even though rambling days of running through the halls and wrestling in the gardens had departed. I watched from his side as, instead of being twisted by his burden, he grew into it, barely holding onto his throne with the aid of sharp instincts, loyal allies, and no little good luck until he had a better grip on the reins of the ever insubordinate horses of Empire. After the second time a rival attempted to poison his cup, I insisted on becoming his personal wine bearer, a duty I devoted myself to. For twenty years, I left the city to dwindle in the dust of a child's daydream. I gladly served my king, and gave little thought to my Lord.

Then my brother Hanani came, dredging up the homes, streets, and walls of the city from the refuse heap of my mind. He held up the worn shape of my old affection to the light like a tattered, long abandoned toy, and then shattered it against the harsh ground of the true city he had come from, until my imaginings were as wrecked as the long-conquered metropolis, rubble scattered over deep foundations. 

*

The desert sun is crueler, now. Instead of glowing, the city scorches, broken open and exposed like a turtle rocking helplessly on its back, with the shell covering its vulnerable belly ripped off. Collapsed houses and crumbled roofs are simultaneously both corpses and tombs, shrouded in their own shadows, while the charred, useless gates gape like bloody wounds in the city's sides. They are as empty as the eyes of the skulls that scorn me, their jaws clacking together in a rattling language I cannot interpret, and yet understand. Their graves are all despoiled, yawning gouges in the resentful earth, their disturbed, reproachful bones leaning out like the sharp, off-white teeth in predator's mouth, bared in warning, to bewail their state of disrespected disarray. Their moans whip my ears, carried on by whatever tormented, restless wind which, like the brittle remnants of my fathers, cannot sleep, and instead paces endlessly tossing ashes back forth.

*

To the degree that receiving Him is describable at all, (which it essentially is not), hearing and even channeling the voice of the Lord is at once sublime and excruciating - but it is infinitely preferable to hearing the dead. When the Lord speaks through you, you have no choice in the matter; His power overwhelms and overflows you, an ocean roaring in a creek bed, the sun blazing through the pin-point of a star. You do not accept because you cannot deny. You merely endure. But the dead are weaker than the living. They are dry husks and clinging misery. They can be struggled with, resisted, and, for a time, ignored, but never escaped. They have only time.

I balked, pushing their clamoring voices aside like cobwebs that clung to my fingers. I did not want to leave my home for ruins my waking eyes had never seen, for distant ancestors long defeated. To this day I am uncertain if the Lord sent his orders through me because my forefathers had already tormented me into beginning His work, or if they chose me for their haunting because I had already somehow been marked as a prophet.

I grew haggard, as desolate and grey as the shades that hounded me. On the rare nights Xerxes came to me, instead of his familiar companion, he found a twitching, gibbering wreck in the grip of phantasmagorical nightmares. His hands soothed my crawling skin and his lips brushed the lids of my weary eyes, murmuring assurances he could not know were meaningless. While skeletal fingers clawed at me, baleful light washing my mind, I clung to the warm, solid presence of him, the taste of salt and worry, real and human in the darkness.

In the mornings, when he tried to speak to me, I simply turned away. The broken walls reared impenetrably between us, and I did not wish to give the mad ghosts driving me away any greater voice than they already had.

When he demanded to know, while I served him his wine in the middle of a feast, all but mid-pour, what troubled me, it was a dirty trick. I was servant, attendant, protector and vassal then, rather than friend, and the truth spilled obediently from me about the horrors I witnessed, the abuses that had to be rectified. How the destruction _ached_ inside of me as if it were my own bones that lay bare and cracked.

He touched my wrist, fingers resting gently, holding me nevertheless. His dark eyes watched me, sadness watered with relief, as he asked,

"What do you request, Nehemiah?" His mouth curled upward, just slightly at one corner.

"If it pleases the King," I began bitterly, before slipping into something more earnest, "and if your servant has found favor with you, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my ancestor's graves, so that I may rebuild it."

His fingers traced my face as he shook his head faintly, rueful and fond.

"No, Nem, I'm going to keep you here in anguish," he muttered, rolling his eyes. Then, his whole expression pinched with seriousness, "How long will you be gone, and when will you return?"

I cannot remember what date I told him, before I walked away with everything I asked him for, but I am sure I did not tell him that we would not see each other for twelve years, and even then only briefly. I believe - I must believe - that he knew I was lying.

 


End file.
